Flora of North America species comparison

Varieties 6 (6 in the flora).

Crataegus pruinosa extends from Arkansas to Wisconsin, through the southern Great Lakes to southern New England, and, in the south, mainly in the Appalachians to northern Georgia.

In the north of its range, Crataegus pruinosa is mainly a shrub of open successional habitats but in the south may commonly be a taller tree of open or thin woodlands.

Many hawthorns have a little waxy bloom on their pomes; it is particularly prominent on Crataegus pruinosa and C. cognata compared to others. Some authors include in C. pruinosa their white-anthered counterparts, here assigned to C. cognata. Whereas C. pruinosa characteristically has entire or subentire sepal margins, some forms in the southwest of the range of the species (for example, C. calliantha Sargent, C. seducta Sargent) may have glandular-serrate sepal margins. They may represent introgression with C. coccinioides. The varieties of C. pruinosa are weakly differentiated from each other, most of them on leaf shape and size characters. The more widespread varieties constitute a range of morphotypes held together by common traits. Crataegus gaudens Sargent is a strikingly distinct form from Pennsylvania that has more or less elliptic leaves with lobes absent; it is clearly related to C. pruinosa. Note that 159. Crataegus ×coleae, a Michigan endemic, will key out here if its laterally scarred pyrenes are missed.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)

Crataegus lanata occurs from Alabama and northern Florida to the Carolinas; there is one record from Chesterfield County, Virginia.

Crataegus lanata is one of the most abundant species in ser. Lacrimatae; it is most like C. lassa and is noted for its very large (for ser. Lacrimatae), usually floppy, distinctly but shallowly incised, kite-shaped leaves, persistently somewhat white-hairy. The fruit of C. lanata ripens copper to red.

Variants of Crataegus lanata include some intermediates with the typical form of C. lassa and forms with wider, more obovate leaves, some of which may be the same as C. amica Beadle. Crataegus pulla Beadle, described from sandy flats along the Tombigbee River, Mississippi, is a form little-known apart from its type and protologue. Crataegus pulla has similarities to C. lanata, but differs by its more or less coarsely and rather irregularly toothed, obovate leaves often with a single, relatively small, somewhat obscure lobe on each side; the leaves are at first more or less tomentose and then variably somewhat glabrescent; flowers are smaller (14–17 mm wide); and fruits are larger (9–12 mm wide).

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)